Anti-Intellectualism among the academic elite

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Dr. Lawrence Summers, president of Harvard University, has been
excoriated for suggesting that innate differences between men and women
might be one of the reasons fewer women succeed in the higher reaches of
science and math. Adding insult to injury, he also questioned the role of
sex discrimination in the small number of female professors in science and
engineering at elite universities.

Professor Nancy Hopkins, an MIT biologist, attended the National
Bureau of Economic Research conference titled "Diversifying the Science and
Engineering Workforce" where Dr. Summers gave his lecture. She had to leave
the lecture, explaining to a Boston Globe (Jan. 17, 2005) reporter, "I
would've either blacked out or thrown up." In today's campus
anti-intellectualism, it's acceptable to suggest that genetics explains some
outcomes, but it's unacceptable to use it as an explanation for other
outcomes. Let's try a few, and guess whether Professor Hopkins would barf.

Suppose a speaker said that sickle cell anemia is genetically
determined and occurs almost exclusively among blacks. Would Professor
Hopkins stomp out of the room, charging racism? What if it were said that a
person's chances of being a carrier of the gene for Tay-Sachs disease, a
disease without a cure, is significantly higher if he is an Eastern European
(Ashkenazi) Jew? Would Professor Hopkins barf and charge the speaker with
anti-Semitism?

Jon Entine, in his book "Taboo: Why Black Athletes Dominate
Sports And Why We're Afraid to Talk About It" (1999), says, "All of the 32
finalists in the last four Olympic men's 100-meter races are of West African
descent." The probability of such an outcome by chance is all but zero. The
genetic physiological and biomechanical characteristics that cause blacks to
excel in some sports  basketball, football and track  spell disaster for
those who have aspirations to be Olympic-class swimmers. Entine says, "No
African American has ever qualified for the U.S. Olympic swim or dive team.
Indeed, despite a number of special programs and considerable funding that
have attracted thousands of aspiring black Olympians, there were only seven
blacks who could even qualify to compete against the 455 swimmers at the
1996 Olympic trials."

Do you suppose Professor Hopkins would charge Entine with
racism? The only behavioral genetic explanation that campus
anti-intellectuals unquestioningly accept is that homosexuality has genetic
origins.

What about women in the professions? In my colleague Thomas
Sowell's 1984 book "Civil Rights: Rhetoric or Reality," there's a chapter
titled "The Special Case of Women." He says, "The economic ramifications of
marriage and parenthood are profound, and often directly opposite in their
effects on men and women." Marriage increases male labor-force participation
and reduces that of women. Marriage increases career interruption for women
but not men. That's important for career advance and selection. If you're a
good computer technician, engineer or specialist in the higher reaches of
science and technology, and you leave your job for a few years, much of your
skills and knowledge will be obsolete when you return. The same obsolescence
is virtually absent in occupations such as editor, librarian and
schoolteacher. This factor, instead of sex discrimination, might explain
some of the career choices made by women.

But what about the flap over Dr. Summers' suggestion that
genetics or innate differences might play a role in the paucity of women in
science and engineering? It's not that important whether Dr. Summers is
right or wrong. What's important is the attempt by some of the academic
elite to stifle inquiry. Universities are supposed to be places where ideas
are pursued and tested, and stand or fall on their merit. Suppression of
ideas that are seen as being out of the mainstream has become all too common
at universities. The creed of the leftist religion is that any difference
between people is a result of evil social forces. That's a vision that can
lead to the return to the Dark Ages.

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